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Elif Kalaycioglu, "The Politics of World Heritage: Visions, Custodians, and Futures of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2025)
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B
Welcome to New Books Network. My name is Jen Hoyer, and today I'm speaking with Elif Koleik, author of the Politics of World Visions, Custodians and Futures of Humanity, published by Oxford University Press in August 2025. In the Politics of World Heritage, Elif analyzes UNESCO's World Heritage regime, tracing its construction across 50 years as it has sought to curate a cultural history of humanity that is attached to outstanding universal value and to tethered goals of peace and solidarity. And today, I'm really happy to be speaking with the author, Dr. Elif Kolakjolen. Elif, welcome to New Books Network.
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C
Thank you so much for having me.
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B
And before we start talking about your book, I would really love if you could introduce yourself more than I have. Maybe if you want to share a bit about your background, your education journey, and the work that you're doing now at University of Alabama.
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C
Absolutely. So, my name is Elif Kalaijolu. I am an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama. As my unruly last name might suggest, I am originally from Istanbul, Turkey, but I've completed most of my higher education in the United states, including my PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota. At the University of Alabama, I pursue my research, which focuses on the role that cultural and historical resources play in the conduct of global politics. Of course, my empirical focus is UNESCO's World Heritage regime, but I like to think more generally about what do notions and narratives of culture and history do in the conduct of global politics. And I also teach undergraduate and graduate classes on global politics. Thank you.
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B
So let's talk about UNESCO. Your book really focuses on UNESCO's World Heritage regime, which I feel like I was familiar with mostly as a tourist going to sites and seeing the signs.
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C
Right.
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B
But this program has existed since 1972, and it recognizes sites that have cultural and historical significance. So, coming from the field of international relations, can you explain for listeners what sparked your interest in world heritage and what drove you to focus all your research on this program?
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C
Absolutely. This is a great question, not the least because when I first decided to pursue this as my PhD dissertation about a decade ago now, I did receive a lot of questions about how is World Heritage global politics? Shouldn't you be doing this as part of another discipline? So one of the key moments that sparked my interest was actually the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS, which took place when I was a PhD student, and the international reaction to it. And I became really curious about what about this site could generate this kind of emotional attachment. And, for example, you had readers submitting letters to British newspapers saying even though they've never been, this site held importance for them and that they suffered its loss and its destruction. And so I began to follow these articulations more closely as they appeared on international news media and kind of started to notice patterns of articulations on what made Palmyra so valuable, which took me to UNESCO's World Heritage Regime because it was a World Heritage site. And a lot of the international reporting was actually picking up on sort of how it's described as universally valuable there. And from then, it become sort of quickly very apparent, actually, that this is a very sort of alive and kicking site of global politics that states relate to it as that they put so much effort and resources into getting sites within their boundaries recognized as world heritage. So once I got to it, it became sort of very apparent and of course, so overlooked by international relations. So I think what sort of sort of focusing on world heritage as part of global politics does is to show us that this is not a domain of just economic wealth or military security, but really states ardently pursue things such as international cultural recognition and prestige. Right. They put sort of material, diplomatic, expert resources into it, and then they also use these resources to craft narratives of desirable futures. Right. Like China's Silk Roads and so on. So once I sort of got to it, it became very clear how actually global political this is. And the next task is to, of course, explain it to the discipline that it is, in fact, something we should care about.
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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C
I think when.
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B
When Palmyra was destroyed, I was in a workplace with a lot of art historians, and I understood their grief and their connection to it. And it was so fascinating to, like, really, while reading your book, really think about how World Heritage is also a political tool, which we will talk more about. But I wanted to jump ahead for just a minute. And I know I'm kind of going out of order, but thinking about, like, how this fit into your discipline. I also want to talk about methodology. And this is kind of a. I don't know if listeners are as curious about this as I am personally, but I kept catching glimpses during. While I was reading your book about your research methodology, and I wanted to give you a chance to share about that. Some of the things I noted were your use of text analysis of various files and records, observation of meetings both in person and online, and then also interviews. But I don't know if that's everything. I would love to hear you chat a little bit about how you study the topic and what kind of sources were useful.
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C
Sure. So I think there are two sort of ways that I think about the methodology or the materials I use, and part of it is the what, and then the second part is the how. Right. So, as you mentioned, there's quite a bit of a range of materials I work with, including archival documents, meeting records, nomination files, expert evaluations, meeting observations, and so on. And I think that range really allows me to sort of reconstruct and communicate to the audiences the world of World Heritage. Right. And sort of how participants understand it, how it's been sort of launched off the ground, and to be able to trace that over 50 years of the regime's implementation. And I know we'll talk about that later probably, but so I approach this regime as a politics of humanity. Right. And so I think of it as essentially sort of various competing or sort of congruent representations of humanity. And so I approach the texts as actually holders of those representations. Right. As sort of constructing this narrative of humanity's cultural history and especially the nomination files and the expert, because they have to make a case for why these sites have outstanding universal value, which they need to have if they're going to become World Heritage. And the experts sort of adjudicating whether they do have this value or not. And so I think of both actually nomination files and expert evaluations as kind of bringing humanity into being by telling stories of its cultural history attached to particular sites. And so that's sort of how I read those documents. So in the first empirical chapter, I turn to archival materials, and that also includes these series of meetings that were held before World Heritage came into being. And that, I think is so important because it also gives us glimpses of other World Heritage regimes that could have happened, but did not happen, right? So you have this fascinating idea, actually, of kind of a Red Cross for monuments, right? And that that would have only, for example, provided emergency restoration aid. And we can imagine in that form we wouldn't have some of the sort of heightened recognition and prestige stakes that are attached to World Heritage today. So archives, I think, in general, and in this case, too, not only tell us how things came into being, but kind of discarded options along the way, right? The other kinds of approaching this that could have been, but never were. And at that point, also, because I really want to sort of give this sense of how this thing was envisioned at the time, I've read the 260 expert evaluations that are written at this time, and that's how I trace, for example, patterns of how these experts, who were so influential at the beginning, how did they understand humanity? How did they think about what's valuable in terms of its culture and history, right? So it's kind of world built. And then I read those against nominations from states to see how the same sites and the same histories, whether they're interpreted similarly or differently. And then the other sort of parts that you talked about, when we get later, sort of the 1990s onwards, the meeting records become a lot more detailed, right? So they begin to give us more of a sense of the debates that were happening during annual meetings. And those are the meetings that decide on what new sites will be World Heritage or not. So there, for example, I've read all of the meeting records from 1978 to 2024, essentially, and those really have mapped for me what are the key debates, how do participants engage with the regime's fundamentals. And they really guided then things like my case selections, right? They've sort of alerted to the paradigm shifts. And so I've sort of inductively followed that sort of documentation to select, for example, cases at each period that challenging representations of humanity were put forth, for example, or that there were deep disagreements between states and experts. So a lot of that, I think, for me, was important to Sort of get a sense of this whole world and then to zero in on its tensions and frictions with particular case studies. And then the interviews, finally, is a great way to understand how people who are currently participating in it, how do they understand what's happening? Right. And we'll talk about some of those changes later. And on this, my expert interviewees and civil servants at UNESCO, they're very principled. They never talk about particular sites and that they take as sort of their sort of professional commitment to not talk about particular instances. But they were great at the beginning, especially in helping me navigate this labyrinth of what do all of these sort of specialized terminologies and processes mean? States, on the other hand, are a lot more forthcoming about sort of their likes and dislikes. But I've also sort of benefited enormously from those meetings when it comes to sort of. Of what the stakes are for state delegations and why they invest the kinds of time and energy that they invest in this regime.
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B
Such a wealth of material to work with. So impressive. And so you mentioned the politics of humanity, and your analysis really centers around this idea. I would love if you could just explain briefly what you mean by a politics of humanity and why this is a really valuable lens for looking at world Heritage.
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C
So, okay, I'll try the briefly part. And if I'm not being briefly, you will.
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B
As much space as you need.
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C
For sure. For sure. So that's sort of. I define politics of humanity as a kind of politics that is authorized by an idea of humanity and that works to bring it into being. Now, what does that mean? Right? What does any part of that mean? So in the book, I actually enter my theorization historically and by tracing how, at least since the 19th century, ideas of humanity have been part of global politics, and how Since World War II especially, humanity has really entered international institutional infrastructures as a subject of global politics. So something like UNESCO's World Heritage regime, I mean, it begins with this idea, right, that we can conceivably speak of humanity as sharing a cultural history. So it becomes sort of the legacy in heritage speak of these sites. And that's, for example, my opening vignette about Timbuktu and the destruction of the Sufi shrines shows how actually this World Heritage status was so integral to ICC's prosecution of Ahmed al Faqi al Mahdi of. Of crimes against humanity for destroying humanity's shared heritage. Right, but it's not. I mean, it's not just UNESCO, Right? So the International Criminal Court can adjudicate crimes that offend humanity's conscience, the UN Declaration of Human Rights actually protects rights of individuals as part of the human family. But they, and so these are all there. And they suggest that humanity has some standing either as a legal subject, political subject, cultural subject, in global politics. But then beyond that, it's not so easy to say, how does humanity come to have a conscience? Right? What is, I mean, it's not an aggregation of our individual consciences or, or how is it possible to think of humanity across time and space as sharing a heritage? Right. And so there I say these are precisely the mechanisms that construct those. Right? I mean, in the case of the World Heritage regime, it identifies certain sites and in identifying them, defines them as this is now humanity's shared heritage. And so that's what I mean by politics of humanity, that it actually makes humanity a subject of global politics and brings it into being. And there my work is in conversation with. And I'd be remiss, not to mention some wonderful interlocutors like Sinja Graf, Aicha Chubukchu, Miriam Tickton, Ilana Feldman, who've pointed to these dynamics in their own works. But where I sort of push further is to say when we talk about politics of humanity, these politics produce social and political orders. So how are parts of humanity valued when we decide on its cultural heritage? Has everyone contributed to it? Have certain parts of humanity contributed more than others? But also who gets to decide what is that shared heritage? And that's the sort of custodians and adjudicators part, right? Who gets to decide? Who gets to sort of protect? And this, I think, is where I can sort of get into the second part of your question. Why? Why is this framework important in thinking about world heritage? There's been a wealth of scholarship, especially more recently on world heritage, and they've sort of made excellent points about how states pursue sort of recognition and prestige through world heritage. A lot of sort interdisciplinary work in terms of how sort of states really push for the recognition of their nationally important sites. But when I was reading all of that, I think something that sort of didn't quite get answered was if nationalism and national interests are so important to states, why do they pursue these things internationally? Right. Why not, for example, turn inwards? Or where does this desire for international recognition comes from? And there sort of one of the things that humanity's shared heritage does is to create the social order of more than national heritage that it says everyone has their national heritage, but some of these are so important that they extend their national context and are just internationally important. And it also, for example, illuminates things like, like why are experts so invested in taking part in it? And sort of how this regime transforms experts from art historians to art historians that can decide what's going to become World Heritage. Right. So it gives us this sort of, I think, much better sense of if this is all about national interests, why don't states sort of give up on it and just claim their national culture otherwise? Right. Why don't they turn inwards? Or why do experts continue to take part in it and as well maybe talk more? But for example, even more recently, when states have really started to sort of disregard expert evaluations and so on, when they discuss sites, they still talk about heritage of humanity, and they continue to mention these things. And that's why I think it's important for us to understand, understand how these frames generate additional social stakes of recognition, prestige and so on. But these are really fundamentally international, and politics of humanity allows me to sort of get at those. And it's the same way about the other part of my framework, which is about the political orders that emerge in relation to humanity. Right. And here again, world Heritage is not unique as a politics of humanity. So those certain actions or futures or visions become either desirable or undesirable based on how we understand humanity, what violates its conscience. Right. And so those are going to be the prosecuted crimes. And in this case, sort of, I show how visions of humanity open up to different possibilities of global politics. And that allows me to show how states use this regime not only to pursue these kinds of additions onto the World Heritage List, but things like the Silk Roads or things like the Bikini Atoll nuclear test site. These are really narratives about humanity's history that are tied to global political futures and that get missed when we only focus on this sort of national level engagement.
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B
Terrific description of all of that. Thank you for boiling it all down into such a concise explanation. And so you divide in your book, you divide the work of World Heritage into three eras. And in the first era, you note that World Heritage had an idea of humanity as a rarefied subject that reflects the best of human capabilities. And so can you explain what that idea of humanity means when it's translated to the work of World Heritage? What kinds of conversations are happening about potential heritage sites? Who was involved in the conversations, and ultimately what kinds of sites get added to the list at this point in time?
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C
Yes, absolutely. And maybe before I get into that, just a quick sort of primer for people who haven't spent a decade of their lives Thinking about oral heritage, which I hope is most of the listeners. But so for something to become World Heritage, it needs to first be nominated by states that have territorial sovereignty over them. And that's something that is part of the World Heritage Convention. And that decision was made because there were lots of concerns about whether this would mean extraterritorialization of heritage sites and how like states might sort of nominate sites in each other's boundaries and that might get tangled up in all kinds of other cultural politics. So it's only states that have territorial sovereignty that can nominate sites, and it's kind of their prerogative. But once nominated, those sites are evaluated by experts. And in the case of cultural heritage, that is icomos, International Council of Monuments and Sites, that is headquartered in Paris, Paris, much like UNESCO itself, and experts affiliated with that get together and sort of present a recommendation. And that recommendation then is discussed at the annual World Heritage Committee meetings by an intergovernmental committee of 21 state delegations. So it's this potent mix already of state and non state actors. And. And the ideal vision was that there would be experts involved at each stage, but their role has become more contested over time. But when we're talking about this early period, then this was really a vision of humanity as this normative subject that really is the depository of our highest creative and aesthetic abilities. And that it also is kind of this trans historical subject that has moved through time in this world, historical, developmental way. And you really see that in the first six criteria that are developed to come to grips with. While we said sites should have outstanding universal value to be World Heritage, but what is outstanding universal value? And these initial criteria are very intended in it's aesthetic masterpieces, sort of stages in human development, ideas that have universal significance. So it's really this sort of high civilizational, monumental vision of humanity that really generates sort of awe, striking cultural productions and that. That really shapes the world in its image. Right. And so there's sort of an emphasis on grand and rare cultural productions, scientific and technological acumen, sort of. And those end up corresponding to a lot of sort of palaces and sort of fortresses and things that I'll say more about in a minute. But it's also at this point a very tight expert community that does these evaluations. They're quite brief. Some of them are signed for a while by only three people that are sort of art historians and archaeologists. So it's a very narrow, what might be called an epistemic community. Right. So people that really share cultural valuations and in fact, if I can sort of digress for a brief moment, one of my sort of remarkable and sort of memorable archival moments was finding this sort of handwritten note by Amadou Makhtar Mabov, who was one of the early director generals of UNESCO and from Senegal. And he writes on this sort of draft ouv make sure that these are not, not based on cultural designs valid of one part of the world only. And so what he has in mind is Eurocentrism. Right. And that kind of monumentality that exists much more in certain parts of the world than other, that doesn't get heeded. So what you have, and this is where the part where I've sort of read all of these expert reports to sort of discern patterns is first, monumentality is just fundamental to how men's creative genius is evaluated at this time. So it's linked to things like ambition, audacity, daring undertaking, sort of the best that we can do. Right. And then you have town planning that is linked to rational control, orderly management, transformation of natural surroundings. So it's thoroughly modern. Right. And then there's also sort of a sort of developmentalist world history that shapes all of these evaluations, that sites are sort of praised for becoming sort of these urban centers when they were merely agricultural villages before. Right. So you can see what gets sort of evaluated. And then what this means is Greco Roman ruins in the Middle east and North Africa, which are sort of universally valuable as early town planning examples. Well known monumental sites. We can probably all conjure up Taj Mahal and the pyramids, but also an immense concentration of sites in Europe like palaces, cathedrals and so on. And then you have colonial cities and monumental indigenous sites associated with Incas and aspects in South America. So the contrast to this, what you don't get at this period are things like vernacular sites or non monumental indigenous sites. And one of the things I do is to look for those, because these clearly states nominated them, experts evaluated them, so what's the problem? Maybe everyone's happy. But for instance, instance, Plovdiv in Bulgaria, Zanzibar in Tanzania, and then Ulurukata national park in Australia are evaluated sort of quite briefly as tu vernacular only has vestiges of their recent history and sort of raising questions as to whether there's any recognizable cultural value attached. And Ulurukatta becomes valued only as a natural heritage site and not as cultural. Right. So that's the kind of, of patterns that we have at this period.
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B
Super. And so you take that first period up to 1994 and at that point, you noted a paradigm shift that brought in an idea of humanity as a diverse and horizontal community. So I would love if you could speak a bit more about what instigated that shift and what that new understanding really means, and then again, what this means for the types of sites that are being added to the World Heritage Land List.
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C
So as all of this was going on, right, you have, I mean, on the one hand, and this is sort of why I focus on social orders of humanity, states are nominating sites because they want to be included, right? There's sort of recognition, there's prestige, but there's also unhappiness about the exclusions and hierarchies of this World Heritage List with a clear concentration of sites in Europe with sort of parts of the world saying we don't have the kinds of cultural sites that are legible, right? But ironically, while this has been sort of ongoing for a while, it's really with changes in experts that we end up with what's called the global strategy for a representative, balanced and credible World Heritage List. And that title kind of indicates the concerns that resulted in that, in that paradigm shift. And here I draw on sort of existing research on how a few elements combine to culminate in this shift. So there were changes within ICOMOs, there was a new sort of cadre of experts that said we need to take this beyond Europe, that it can't just be sort of forms of valuation that are invested in these cultural historical frameworks works. But then also at this time, you have Isaac Shiva, a French anthropologist who is very close to UNESCO, and he's really invested in sort of vernacular, know how. So heritage as living, right? Heritage, not as sort of what can be museumized and preserved as that. And then when we're talking about vernacular and living, we're really sort of getting a lot closer to diverse diversity, right? Because that sort of. We're no longer talking about grand aesthetic styles and their sort of influence. And then finally there were experts from Australia and Canada. And if we think of that time, we're also talking about domestic debates in these places in terms of how to properly sort of engage with Indigenous heritage, right? In terms of these are when sort of returns of human remains caring for Indigenous sites. These are all sort of very lively domestic debates. And from there, what arrives at the World Heritage scene is basically asking for a new kind of attentiveness to human nature relations. And in ways that when you separate those and when you value culture as sort of dominating nature, you're always Going to at best undervalue other forms of heritage and indigenous heritage that has a very different nature culture relationship. So what's sort of, I think what then becomes a really good illustration of that is the reversal of fortunes exactly in relation to the kinds of sites I was talking about. Right. So Zanzibar becomes profusely sort of praised as testament to the interaction of diverse cultures. Uluru Kata, and there's another national park in Tongariro in New Zealand which had sort of suffered a similar fate. They get re evaluated and this time they become sort of mixed heritage sites and their indigenous cultural values are also recognized. So once humanity is sort of understood more as this diverse community which also expresses itself through these vernacular sites and through know how, you begin to sort of see how a broader range of sites are evaluated and appreciated. We also begin to see more vernacular sites nominated by African states. And I focus on this region quite a bit for this period because it was actually one of the priority areas for the paradigm shift itself. And sort of the first meeting of the global strategy is held in sub Saharan Africa and with the sort of explicit aim that the continent's cultural heritage has been undervalued by the regime and what one of the opening speakers calls the sort of imperialist conceptions of culture that it was operating with. So there's sort of a commitment to that. And then what you see are inclusion of sites such as the Osan Osokbo grove in Nigeria, the Mijikenda Kaya forests in Kenya. And again, what's sort of why these sites are valued now is because of their spiritual or sacred values. Transhumans like things that would never sort of make it under the previous set of criteria and paradigm. I will say though, that it's not suddenly now everything is okay. Right. And there. There's two issues that I identify when I look at these documents. One is, well, now you have these vernacular sites and spiritual sites, and they're potentially up for universal value designation. But then they exist alongside these sites like the Versailles and these long sort of circulated values of grandeur and monumentality. And the meeting I mentioned that was held in Zimbabwe, the great thing about it is it shows how aware regional experts are of these tensions. So some of them are very excited. Finally we become legible. Finally sort of these other vernacular sites will be valued. Others are a lot more cautious and they're worried that offering these sites onto the list is only going to reproduce prejudices of quote, unquote primitive versus again, quote unquote civilized culture.
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B
Right.
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C
So that's one problem, and then the other problem is, well, if humanity is diverse and if this diversity is reflected in its cultural production, what does it mean to evaluate parts of that diversity as universally valuable and who can credibly do so? Right. Because we're no longer talking about what's the best example of 19th century Gothic architecture, but really making these judgments about different ways of being culturally Right. And that becomes a challenging negotiation for experts especially.
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B
Well, and so then you mark the end of that phase and the beginning of the third in 2010, and you explain that at this point, humanity is still understood as diverse, but there's a shift in the role of states. And so, again, I would love if you could just talk a bit more about what that means and circle back to some of these earlier questions that have guided us in terms of how this changes the conversations about potential heritage sites, and more specifically, who's involved in those conversations and what types of sites get added to the list in this third period.
- [38:12]
C
So this is the period that I call sort of states as humanity. And it's not supposed to be very compelling. In fact, a lot of participants and observers in the regime don't find this vision of humanity very compelling, but it's one that begins to circulate nevertheless. And so there's a lot of, again, as I said, excellent interdisciplinary work on world heritage. And there's a consensus that 2010 was kind of a critical juncture. So that World Heritage Committee meeting was held in Brazil, and it really sort of signaled a change in the tone of engagement and in the mode of engagement as well. And that sort of happened at a very potent intersection, again, of multiple ongoing dynamics. Right. On the one hand, it's sort of what I have called hierarchies in the regime's social order. Right. These ongoing sort of inequalities of representation, growing resentment against experts, both real and perceived, as sort of those whose evaluations contributed to sort of unequal representations of various parts of the world. And that becomes, of course, even more of an issue when you have a global strategy that aspires to a balanced and representative list. Right. So there's nothing in the original, original convention that talks about balance and representation. But with 1994, there's a promise of that, and unfulfilled promises are sort of generators of disappointment and frustration. But then you also have the 2008 global financial crisis, which, as Bruman, who has written a book just on this critical juncture, he notes that this is a time when BRICS members, so Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa, they become sort of a lot more vocal in their critique of what we call liberal international institutions. So things that have been sort of part of the UN system that work roughly or broadly within liberal ideas of the economy or cosmopolitanism, in this case. Right. So you have this sort of pushback against existing institutions. And in the case of World Heritage, this means presenting a third vision of humanity. As you know, this is a diverse community that stays, but it's adequately represented by the community of states. So this is when states, sort of state delegations increasingly position themselves and each other as adjudicators, contributors and custodians of World Heritage. So they can evaluate it, they can sort of protect it, and it begins to really sideline other actors. So they begin to overturn expert evaluations. There's a sort of silencing of civil society observers that attend these meetings, meetings. And here it's important to sort of point to a divergence. Right. When it comes to being willing to overturn expert evaluations in relation to their nominations. All states do this. Right. It's very hard to at this point talk about absolutely principled. Icomos said this site is not ready to be World Heritage yet. So we don't want it to be world. Well, we'll go ahead and sort of present a better dossier. We'll go ahead and develop a better management system. States that opt for that are really increasingly rare. What's different though, is that when it comes to sort of claiming this as a normatively and explicitly good description of humanity, we really see these articulations emerge mostly from a few influential delegations, such as China, Russia and Egypt, mostly sort of what we can call maybe the Global south or the non West. So in those articulations, again, humanity is diverse, but because it's represented in that diversity by states, if we want to honor a diverse humanity, what we need to do is accept the nominations that states put forth and not make sort of too much of a fuss about it. So that's a sort of much more. More explicit sort of making a case for this idea of humanity. And then you do see sort of other states objecting to it and sort of saying, no, this has gone too far and this is no longer about humanity. And one of the things again that I sort of observe as attention is actually even states that push for this, like, let's leave aside experts, let's do this between us as states, they also realize that now they have a problem because if they push too far, it is really sort of only about states at that point. And, and that's where I sort of go back to my framework of politics of humanity, right? Because. Because states want this like, more than national, international recognition and prestige, they can't do things in way that reduces world heritage simply to national cultural appreciation days. Right. So what you see is this fascinating trend then, that when states are discussing sites which experts have evaluated negatively, they'll bring in sort of these things of aesthetic genius, humanity's heritage. So all of these things that are in circulation, they use those to make a case. And they don't just say we should sort of inscribe or register this site because it's of national value. Right. So they try to recreate this world in terms of, no, this is about humanity because this is universally valuable. So you see them sort of in this bind now that they don't want experts to make the decision. They think humanity is the community of states. But once they've done done it, they've jeopardized the kind of international prestige and recognition that they wanted to get out of it. So to go back to the other part of the question, then, in terms of the kinds of sites that get added to the list, at this point, it's less about new kinds of sites and more about sort of a willingness to overturn negative expert evaluations and more about most of the things that get nominated now are going to likely become World Heritage. And so it's less about the kinds of sites and more about how do they discuss these to still try to claim this is not just a national interest game?
- [45:47]
B
Definitely. Well, and so then you, you get to this final question in your conclusion of is it broken? And. And I guess, yeah, I would love if you could share with listeners a few of your own conclusions about whether the whole World Heritage process and program overall is still impactful, is broken in what it can continue to do as it is.
- [46:18]
C
So the conclusion is called should we call the toy broken? And that's kind of something that I draw from one of my interests interviewees when we were talking about the post 2010 sort of state engagements with World Heritage. And they said, well, if the toy breaks, no one can play with it. And it was exactly this kind of speaking to the tensions I was speaking about a moment ago, if states are breaking parts of the regime, especially when it comes to expert evaluations of these sites, but they also seem to realize that they need to keep it just intact enough so that they can continue to get some of the prestige. So where I think things get differently serious and that's why I sort of wrote. The conclusion that I wrote is actually this recent trend of nominating sites associated with memories of recent conflicts. So sites associated with the Rwandan genocide, for example, there's the funerary monuments of World War I, that was a transboundary nomination between France and Belgium. There's sort of one from Argentina, there's now actually last year, sites associated with the Khmer Rouge regime. And so here I think there is a differently important concern about how states can use world, world Heritage to advance descriptions of sites that do not represent the possible multiplicity of perspectives that attach to them. Or they might use this to advance and institutionalize narratives that might not be conducive to robust processes of coming to terms with the past. So ordinarily we might have hoped that experts sort of provide a counterbalance to what can quickly become sort of victor's narratives or other forms of one sided narratives. But then there are two important caveats to that. So the first, as I mentioned, is states are really willing to overturn those now. So even if experts sort of asked for more nuanced or more comprehensive evaluations, there's no guaranteeing that those will make it. Right. And by make it, I mean, for example, to the official descriptions of sites that appear on the virtual World Heritage, right? Or sort of on the ground processes of interpretation and so on. And then the second issue is sort of ICOMOS is not an expert body that specializes in sites of conscience, right? So it's much more sort of robust in its membership in terms of art historians, archaeologists and so on, but not necessarily groups that have been working to develop sort of better interpretive practices around sites of conscience. And to me, and this might be where I'm sort of betraying my IR grounds, right, that this is a different order of a challenge than if sites that do not have outstanding universal value from the perspective of art and architecture make it to the lips right there. We can say, not a big deal, one more site is conserved or so on, right? And that's for a long time, actually what I think some of the experts and officials involved with the regime were also saying, okay, maybe some of these should not have been World Heritage, but if it gets more heritage sites to be protected, no harm done. But I think it's different when we're beginning to talk about these sort of contested sites and whether we can still say no harm done or whether sort of a different order of problem appears. And I think for me, I mean, it's not to sort of call it broken so much as to say we have to speak about the ways in which it is. Right. And that involves those of us who research it, and I think some of the participants in it as well. But I should say again, in sort of the research, there are also these really sort of inspirational files. And one that I talk at length is the Bikini at All Nucleus test site, which was submitted by the Republic of Marshall Islands and actually added to the list at this controversial 2010 meeting. Right. And that file, I think, well, maybe everyone should read it. But it does this wonderful job of really showing how can we talk about humanity as a real sort of subject of global politics. Right. In this case, we're kind of thrown together by the risk of nuclear weapons and the kind of damage they can do. But we're never equal in our sort of precarity. Right. And they do this wonderful job of holding on to both what is shared and what's quite uneven about humanity. And I think World Heritage continues to also provide space for civil society, for grassroots, who can at least sort of go and make statements in these spaces and also say, hey, these are our histories too, or we're calling out the duplicities of states and so on. And so I would be hesitant in that way to sort of say, let's call it broken, because I think it's sort of ambivalent in its possibilities. Right. It creates these spaces of use and abuse for some states, but then it can also create these opportunities of voice amplification for grassroots, indigenous or smaller state actors that would otherwise not find those platforms.
- [52:34]
B
Thank you for sharing so much about this book. And before we wrap up our conversation, I wanted to give you a bit of a chance to talk about what you're working on next. I don't know if you have taken all this research on World Heritage and other directions or if there's other totally new projects that you're working on now that this book is out in the world.
- [52:53]
C
Well, so for the. Well, since it's been out, one of the things I've been doing is to sort of pull out sort of articles out of it to sort of further elaborate on these concepts of international recognition and prestige. But I think what's sort of looking further ahead, I am really kind of picking up where the book leaves off. So I have an ongoing research project on contested heritage and that includes, again, sites on unsettled boundaries or sites with difficult histories. And I'm sort of further pursuing this thread of how do states use international institutions to sort of stabilize their own narrative and marginalize others. But also how do international institutions maybe create opportunities, opportunities for others? So one paper I'm working on is, it's tentatively titled Between World Heritage Turkey and Armenians, the Archaeological Site of Ani, where I sort of juxtapose these competing narratives about the site and how these are shaped by it becoming world heritage. And then I'm also excited to start a research project actually on, on the revitalization of the Silk Roads by the People's Republic of China. And a lot is sort of being written about it, but I'm really interested in sort of how people like heritage sort of officials, museum directors, curators, all these people that receive these traveling exhibitions right in Central Asia and beyond, how do they understand what's happening and how do they understand this cultural diplomacy that's really, I think, one of the most sort of largest scale state led heritage politics that we've seen recently, at the very least. So I'm sort of curious to pursue how it resonates on the ground. So that's what's next.
- [55:02]
B
Lots to work on. Wow. Well, thank you. And once again today I've been speaking with Elif Kolejolu, author of the Politics of World Heritage Visions, Custodians and Futures of Humanity, published by Oxford University Press in 2025. My name is Jen Hoyer and you're listening to New Books.
- [55:30]
C
Foreign.
- [55:35]
A
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